The Menus

This section details the various menus that MayaVi provides. Almost all the menu items have hot keys associated with them. The underlined letter indicates the key sequence to be used. Consider the case of the New Window menu item (the letter N is underlined) that is in the File menu (the letter F is underlined). This can be reached by using the following key strokes. Alt-F followed by N. The Menu itself requires the Alt modifier but the menu item does not. The following are the various menus that MayaVi provides.

File Menu

The File menu provides the following menu items.

New Window

This creates a new MayaVi visualization window that is completely independent of the first window. Any number of such windows can be created.

Open

This provides a submenu containing two items.

Import

This provides a submenu containing two items.

Load

This provides a submenu containing three items.

Save

This provides a submenu containing four items.

Save Scene to

Provides a menu which in turn provides menu items to export the visualized scene to a Post Script file, PPM/BMP/TIFF/JPEG/PNG image, Open Inventor, Geomview OOGL, VRML and RenderMan RIB files. It is also possible to save the scene to a vector graphic via GL2PS. This is only available if VTK is built with GL2PS support.

Close

Provides submenu's to close the current DataVizManager. This means that all the ModuleManagers of that particular DataVizManager will also be deleted. It also provides menus to close the currently active VRML and 3D Studio scenes that have been imported.

Close All

Close all the DataVizManagers and all the imported VRML2 and 3D Studio scenes.

Exit

Close this particular MayaVi Window. If this is the only MayaVi window the application exits completely.

Visualize Menu

The Visualize menu provides the following menu items.

Options Menu

The Options menu provides the following menu items.

Preferences

Provides a GUI using which one can edit the default preferences. The preferences allow one to set various default settings including foreground color, background color, default directory where the file related dialogs will open in initially. These options can be saved so that the next time MayaVi is started it will use these defaults. If you set the default directory to an empty one the directory that the file open/save dialogs will use will be intelligently chosen. The stereo rendering option enables stereo rendering in the MayaVi window. If the save current lighting option is set then the current lighting is saved as the default and used in all subsequent MayaVi visualizations.

Configure RenderWindow

Provides a simple GUI to configure the Visualization RenderWindow. This is also where one can change the stereo rendering options.

Change Foreground

Allows one to change the default foreground color.

Change Background

Allows one to change the default background color.

Show Debug window

Pops up a small window where debug messages are printed. This is very useful if you run into trouble and want to know what happened. It also shows the function call sequence. The messages are also printed to stderr.

Show Control Panel

Toggles the visibility of the control panel. This can be very useful when you want to do a full screen visualization.

Reload Modules

This function reloads all the currently loaded Python modules. This is very useful while debugging a new feature for some module that one is creating. One may also see funny behavior for already instantiated objects.

Help Menu

The Help menu provides the following menu items.